News Blog

Greetings from the Wild Nature Institute in northern Tanzania!  Our tri-lingual children’s book, The Amazing Migration of Lucky the Wildebeest, tells the story of wildlife migration from the perspective of a young wildebeest. The distribution of the books to rural schools in the migration route was a resounding success! All the teachers commended and welcomed the initiative, viewing it as an important source of educational materials for both pupils and teachers given the extreme shortage of children’s books in rural areas of Tanzania.

Overall, 1,946 books have been presented to schoolchildren in the wildlife migration route, 37 to important Masai village and district leaders, and 2 to federal wildlife authorities. In the coming months, an additional 600 books will be distributed to schools, Masai bomas (family compounds), and village leaders. We are immensely grateful to Burners Without Borders for providing our very first grant to print and distribute the books, and for supporting the campaign to protect the critical Northern Plains wildlife migration route. The goals of this campaign are to educate young and old about the importance of maintaining migration routes to ensure the persistence of wildlife populations, how healthy wildlife populations can be an economic benefit through eco-tourism, and how essential the migration routes are to maintaining cultural pastoralist traditions. Ultimately we hope to instigate wildlife conservation through land-use planning and anti-poaching, and empower the local villagers to benefit economically from their wildlife resources. Thank you Burners Without Borders for believing in us!